Maxwell’s Flame (8 page)

‘Are you staying here?’ one of them asked her.

‘Did you know the dead woman?’

‘Why haven’t the police let you all go?’

Rachel had never been subjected to this before, but Maxwell had. He leaned across as far as his seat belt would allow and smiled his gappy engaging grin. ‘You’re quite right to be excited about GNVQ,’ he said. ‘We at the chalk face think it’s a pretty exciting time too. Can’t wait to put it into practice, via our team critique.’

‘And you are …?’ One of the spottier ones pointed a biro at him.

‘Incredibly pissed off by the appalling standards of journalism in this great country of ours.’

‘Oh, ha,’ the spotty youth sneered. ‘I’d like your name.’

‘I’m sure you would,’ Maxwell beamed, ‘and my IQ and word-power, I shouldn’t wonder, not to mention my taste in bow-ties.’ He saw the lad’s bemused face and took pity on him. ‘All right,’ he said, straight-faced, ‘John Patten, rather tenuously Secretary of State for Education. Drive on, chauffeuse.’

And Rachel put her foot down.

‘Bastards!’ John McBride shook his head, staring out from the lowered blinds of the Trevelyan Suite. ‘When the guv’nor gets back, there’ll be hell to pay. If I find the shit who leaked all this to the press …’

‘You can’t keep a murder under wraps, sir,’ WPC O’Halloran told him. She thought it was something the Inspector ought to have known already.

He looked at her. She was right, of course. Repulsively Christian. Done a lot of work with deprived kids on council estates, that sort of thing, but right, nevertheless. ‘Who’s waiting?’ he asked.

‘Michael George Wynn, St Bede’s School’

‘Right. Bring us two teas, Mavis, in …’ he checked his watch, ‘five minutes.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Michael George Wynn sat in the incident room annexe, the sunlight slanting in through the slats to gild his pepper and salt beard. He’d been chatting about this and that with DS Dunn. They’d found common ground in the same golf handicap, so that whiled away the time that McBride kept them both waiting. The Inspector always did this. Any one of the Carnforth guests was a suspect. And waiting rattled them. Even the innocent ones.

‘Right.’ McBride entered with a brusqueness that even made Dunn jump. ‘Mr Wynn, I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’ He nodded at the Sergeant, who flicked on the machinery. ‘Interview commenced eleven thirty-eight, Mr Michael Wynn, in the presence of DS Dunn and myself, DI McBride.’

DI McBride sat down opposite the Deputy Principal of St Bede’s. ‘You knew the dead woman?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I did,’ Wynn nodded.

‘For how long?’

‘Ooh, let’s see. Nine, no … ten years.’

‘In what capacity?’

‘She was a colleague at the school where I teach.’

‘That’s St Bede’s School, Bournemouth?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you know about her?’

‘Liz? Well, it’s difficult to know where to start. She was a warm, genuine person. Do anything for anyone type. She’s a great loss. I mean, any human being is, but Liz in particular. As far as St Bede’s goes, literally irreplaceable.’

‘Not the sort of woman to have made enemies, then?’ McBride asked.

‘Lord, no. Oh, except among the kids, maybe.’

‘The kids?’

‘Inspector, you must understand – as a policeman you’re dealing with warped psychology every day. I don’t know how many thousands of children would have passed through Liz’s hands in her career. But the odds are, she’ll have crossed some of them. You know how it is. As a teacher, you’re responsible for discipline. So you catch some kid misbehaving and you castigate him or her. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that’s the end of the matter. But that hundredth time … well, that’s the oddball.’

‘The psychopath?’ Dunn asked.

Wynn smiled. ‘It sounds a little ludicrous stated as baldly as that, doesn’t it? But essentially, yes, you’re right. So you find your tyres slashed the next morning or your office vandalized or a rather colourful thumbnail sketch sprayed on the back wall of the Sports Hall. It’s usually harmless.’

‘But in this case it wasn’t,’ McBride reminded him. ‘Are you seriously telling us that a child did this? Battered his teacher to death?’

There was a knock at the door and Mavis O’Halloran stood there with a tray of teacups. Dunn waved her in.

‘A child, no,’ Wynn went on, ‘but children have this infuriating habit of growing up, Inspector. The boy becomes a man. The girl a woman. I’ve even known one case where the boy becomes a woman, but we’ll let that pass, shall we?’

‘That’s an interesting idea, Mr Wynn,’ McBride narrowed his eyes against the steam of his tea, ‘the possibility that someone on this course is a former pupil of Mrs Striker’s. But she’d know them, surely?’

‘Perhaps she did,’ Wynn shrugged, stirring his tea slowly. ‘We’d only been here a couple of hours. Perhaps she hadn’t had a chance to mention it to anybody.’

‘Yes, Mavis?’ McBride snapped. The woman was standing there with an empty tray as though waiting for a tip.

‘Er … the warrants have just come through, sir. I thought, in the absence of the DCI, you’d want to know.’

‘Yes,’ McBride said quickly. ‘Thank you. That will be all.’

Wynn found himself smiling as the girl left.

‘Something strike you as amusing, Mr Wynn?’ the Inspector asked.

‘Interesting rather than amusing,’ Wynn said, ‘the way in which professions work. I’m not sure I could get away with such blatant sexism in my line. At St Bede’s, I usually end up making the tea.’

McBride’s face darkened. He didn’t like Michael Wynn. He didn’t like Michael Wynn any more than he liked Peter Maxwell. They were both the sort who ought to report to the station every week for a damned good smacking. He flicked the intercom switch in front of him. ‘Mavis,’ he said, ‘would I be horribly sexist if I asked you to bring in another sugar lump … dear?’

And Michael Wynn chortled anew.

The pool was empty except for Sally Greenhow. Her backstroke needed work, but it was competent and she trailed through the blue water under the dim lights. Her body looked blue and irregular with the refraction at the water’s surface and she came up for air before she touched the side.

Something made her turn. She couldn’t say what. It may have been a coat falling in the cloakroom, something like that. But it echoed and re-echoed as small sounds do in an empty, vaulted chamber like a swimming pool. Unlike Peter Maxwell, she wasn’t a film buff, but she’d seen one film on telly when she was a child that had frightened her badly and it rushed back to her now. It was a black and white B feature and she couldn’t remember who was in it, but the heroine was being driven insane by the baddies and her father’s body kept popping up at various points around the spooky old family home. It was the scene in the garden pool that terrified her most. The old boy just sitting there, his long hair streaming out with the weeds in the current, his dead, sightless eyes staring ahead. She shuddered to wipe the picture from her mind and climbed out quickly.

For a moment, she stood dripping by the poolside. The feeling that someone was watching her grew stronger. She looked left. She looked right. No one. The only light came from the pool and from the changing area. She felt her heart thump and saw her breasts heaving under the flimsy bikini top. She walked quickly back to where she’d left her clothes, splashing through the footbath as she went, swinging her head to spray the surplus water from her hair.

She was just reaching for her towel when she heard it again.

‘Who’s there?’ Her voice was stronger than she hoped. ‘Who is it?’

‘Sally?’

Sally Greenhow relaxed, her shoulders hunching as her heart descended from her mouth. ‘Max, you utter bastard!’ she hissed.

A bow-tie and braces came round the corner with Peter Maxwell inside them.

‘What the devil are you doing here?’ he asked her, his voice booming with the echo.

‘Skiing,’ she said, rubbing the towel through her hair. ‘That and shitting myself. Do you always spy on girls in swimming pools?’

‘Every chance I can get,’ he beamed. ‘Sally? You’re really frightened.’

‘Oh, piss off, Max,’ she snapped.

‘Later. At the moment, I need to know how it went with the Luton lot this morning.’

‘It’s …’ Sally looked at her wet wrist. ‘Oh, bugger …’

‘Nearly half-past ten,’ Maxwell helped her out. ‘I’m in rather a hurry, I’ve been summoned to the presence.’

‘The presence?’

‘McBride sent a rather homely policewoman to ask me to accompany her to the incident room. I said I was busy and would be along shortly.’

‘Well, it’s too complicated to tell you in a couple of minutes, Max. Trot off to see the constabulary while I change and … oh, God.’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘My knickers have gone.’

‘What?’

‘My knickers. Max, you aren’t playing silly buggers, are you?’

Maxwell looked shocked. ‘I can honestly say, hand on heart, I have never touched a lady’s knickers without obtaining her express permission first.’

‘But they’re gone.’ Sally frowned. ‘I left them here.’ She riffled through the clothes. ‘Everything else is here. Except the knickers.’

‘Well, well.’

‘Things are far from well, Maxie.’ Sally was biting her lower lip, fumbling for her specs. ‘Can we go? Can we go tomorrow? I don’t like it here.’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t very sensible’, Maxwell was as serious as the girl now, ‘to swim alone. At this time of night. Did anybody know you’d be here?’

‘No … oh, wait. I may have mentioned it to Valerie Marks.’

‘Ah, the Dyke of Richard de Clare

‘Now, that’s unkind, Max,’ Sally scolded him. ‘She’s just rather … butch, that’s all. Anyway, even lesbians don’t go around pinching underwear.’

‘Ah,’ Maxwell passed Sally her watch, ‘what a little innocent.’

‘Will you please bugger off so I can get at least partially dressed?’

‘Oh, right …’ and he padded off. ‘Will you be all right? Getting to your room, I mean?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him, but she didn’t convince herself.

‘See you when I can, then,’ he called. ‘You’ll be awake?’

‘Oh, yes,’ she promised, ‘but make your intentions clear, because I’ll have a shotgun under my pillow.’

‘That’s my girl!’ He winked at her.

And she watched his shadow move huge and silent across the wall and around the corner.

Inspector McBride interrupted Head of Sixth Form Maxwell on his way to the Trevelyan Suite. McBride was tired after four days cooped up in the same four walls. He needed air. He needed space. So he took Maxwell out on to the roof garden that gave off the bar. There was no one out here and McBride relaxed enough to allow Maxwell to buy him a drink.

‘Boddingtons, I think you said.’ Maxwell put the golden glass down on the white enamel table. ‘Lovely night for May, Inspector.’

It was. A full complement of stars studded the heavens, yet, curiously, nothing was right with the world.

‘I did.’ McBride took a sip. ‘I also said a half, but what the hell. Your very good health, Mr Maxwell.’

‘And yours, Mr McBride.’ The Head of Sixth Form raised his Southern Comfort. ‘They’re out of peanuts, I’m afraid.’

‘They’re bad for you,’ McBride assured him.

‘So,’ Maxwell perched on the rail that ran the length of the building, ‘how’s it all going, then?’

‘I hoped you might tell me,’ McBride said.

‘Come again?’

The Inspector got up and leaned with both arms on the rail. At the edge of the floodlit grounds, the nightwatch of the newsmen stood smoking. ‘Love ’em or hate ’em,’ he said, ‘they’re always there. Like sharks in the bloody water.’

Maxwell nodded. Well, well, the rozzer was a lyricist too. ‘Tell me,’ he leaned to his man, ‘are you still on duty?’

‘No,’ McBride said. ‘I should have gone home three hours ago.’

‘I hope you have an understanding wife,’ Maxwell smiled.

‘Cath? Oh, yes.’ McBride smiled too. ‘It’s in policemen’s wedding vows. Didn’t you know? Their wives promise to love, honour, obey and not mind about the hours.’

Maxwell laughed.

‘The rumour is, Mr Maxwell,’ McBride had become all confidential, ‘that you are something of an amateur detective.’

‘Me?’ Maxwell frowned. ‘Whoever gave you that idea?’

‘Oh, a snippet here and there.’ McBride was non-committal. He wasn’t about to tell Maxwell he’d got Gary Leonard to break into his room. ‘Which puts us in a rather awkward position.’

‘When you say “us”,’ Maxwell checked, ‘who do you mean exactly?’

‘You and I,’ McBride told him.

Maxwell decided to overlook the lapse of grammar. ‘How so?’ he asked.

‘Well, to be frank, you could be useful.’

‘What, listening at keyholes, you mean?’

‘Nothing that unsubtle, Mr Maxwell. I wouldn’t insult your intelligence. But people might say things to you they wouldn’t say to us, if you get my drift.’

‘All right,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘So long as I’m content to play – excuse the rather unpleasant phraseology – coppers’ nark, you gain. What’s the down side?’

‘The down side is that your metaphorical listening at keyholes could queer everybody’s pitch, so to speak.’

Metaphorical? Maxwell looked at John McBride in a slightly new light. Perhaps you didn’t get to be a Detective Inspector before you were thirty for nothing after all. ‘So your message to me tonight is …?’

McBride finished his drink. ‘Lay off.’ The voice was harsh, the eyes cold. ‘Whatever you think you know, forget it. This isn’t a Miss Marple, Mr Maxwell. This is real. Leave it to the professionals.’ He put his glass down loudly on the metal table. ‘Am I getting through?’

‘Yarc, yarc,’ said Maxwell.

‘You what?’ McBride frowned at him.

‘West Point slang, apparently. Brown-nosers among the cadets who sit at the front in lectures, agreeing with the lecturer – YARC – “You’re absolutely right, commander!” Good-night, Mr McBride.’

8

Maxwell padded down Sally Greenhow’s corridor at a little after midnight. As he turned into it, he’d seen the lighted cigarettes of the paparazzi dogwatch darting like fireflies in the trees that ringed Carnforth’s entrance way. A police car dithered at the gates then swung left before any of the newshounds were awake enough to give chase. Inspector McBride going home at last.

Maxwell knocked three times and whispered low. ‘You and I’, he muttered, ‘were sent by Joe.’

‘What?’ a bewildered voice called from inside.

‘It’s me, Sally,’ Maxwell hissed. ‘Old Grey Eyes is back.’

She opened the door a crack then hauled him inside. ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ she demanded.

‘Ssh.’ Maxwell held a finger to lips. ‘The neighbours.’

‘Sod the neighbours.’ Sally was in a pink housecoat and had a towel wrapped around her head. ‘I’d just about given you up.’

‘Not for dead, I hope. Sorry.’ He flopped into her armchair, flicking aside the curtains to check the grounds again. ‘Inspector McBride was chatty.’

‘Really?’ She rummaged in her bag. ‘I’d got him pegged as a surly bastard. You don’t deserve this,’ and she brandished a bottle at him.

‘Ah,’ his eyes lit up, ‘Chateau Carnforth. A ’43 by its label, not too presumptuous in its precociousness.’

‘It’s actually bottled for Tesco,’ she said, yanking out the cork with her Special Needs Department bottle-opener, ‘and if it’s older than last Christmas, I’ll vote Conservative.’

‘Ah,’ Maxwell smiled, ‘now, there’s a rash statement. Found your knickers?’

‘No.’ She poured for them both. ‘I don’t think there’s much point in letting this breathe – it looks as if it’s been on an iron lung for weeks. Cheers.’

‘Here’s looking at you, kid!’ and he took a gulp. It didn’t mix well with Southern Comfort, but he wasn’t enough of a cad to say so. ‘Here’s to crime.’

‘What did McBride want?’

‘To warn me off, basically,’ Maxwell told her, loosening his bow-tie.

‘Off what?’

‘Aren’t they the water authorities watchdog?’

‘Maxwell,’ Sally growled. All in all, she felt she’d gone through enough today.

‘Sorry.’ He beamed his most endearing beam. ‘The case, dear heart. He warned me off the case. Called me Miss Marple at one point.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Sally said, lolling on the bed. ‘You must be twice Joan Hickson’s age.’

‘Thank you, seat of my desires,’ he grinned acidly. ‘But to more important matters. The Luton lot.’

‘Ah, yes …’ Sally jerked her bum forward and reached for the Former Yugoslavian red again. ‘Well, “lot” is a rather, shall we say, plural way of putting it.’

‘Oh?’

‘I began with Alan Harper-Bennet.’

‘And?’

Sally wasn’t inclined to tell Maxwell about Valerie Marks knowing Rachel. Anyway, it was rather a long shot. It wasn’t likely to be the same woman. And she wasn’t sure how Maxwell would react to the news. Better let sleeping Heads of Sixth Form lie. ‘I got no further. I sat by him at breakfast, intending to sneak in a few searching questions and go on to someone else, Dr Moreton, perhaps. Or Phyllida Bowles. Anyway, Mr Harper-Bennet had other ideas.’

‘Fancied you, did he?’

‘In an oblique sort of way, yes. It’s never happened to you, Max, so you wouldn’t understand.’

‘Oh, thanks.’ Maxwell looked hurt and outraged at the same time. ‘That’s not altogether true, you know. I’ve had my flings, sown my oats and other metaphors.’

‘No, I don’t mean that.’ She hunted for her ciggies. ‘I mean… well, it wasn’t me Harper-Bennet fancied, but my body.’

Maxwell looked blank. ‘I thought the two were inseparable,’ he said. ‘He’s not likely to fancy your mind, is he?’

It was Sally’s turn to look hurt.

‘No,’ Maxwell knew a raw nerve when he saw one, ‘I didn’t mean that disparagingly. God, I’d kill for an MEd.’

‘Liar!’ she threw at him. ‘What I meant was that men like Harper-Bennet treat you as a sex object. I got the impression he’d be equally happy with my … Oh, God …’

‘Panties?’ Maxwell was way ahead of her.

Sally nodded. ‘It had to be,’ she said. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ and she fumbled to light her cigarette. ‘The thought of that pallid bastard sneaking into the pool changing-rooms …’

‘Yes, yes.’ Maxwell could be an insensitive bastard at times. This was one of them, dismissing the girl’s sense of outrage with a double positive and a swig of wine. ‘Now, let’s share a few facts. How did the Luton lot get here?’

‘Moreton, Phyllida Bowles and Gregory Trant came in the school minibus. Apparently, they’ve got another one for school teams and so on. And they needed it to bring all their presentation equipment, not realizing that they had all the hardware here at Carnforth anyway.’

‘And Harper-Bennet?’

‘Brought his car.’

Maxwell flicked aside the curtains again to view the line of vehicles parked under the artificial light. ‘Do we know what he drives?’

‘No.’ Sally blew smoke to the ceiling. ‘But I’ll lay you odds he’s got my knickers in his boot.’

‘What time did they arrive on the Thursday?’ Maxwell asked.

‘Harper-Bennet was here first. The others hit a lot of traffic on the M25.’

‘As you do,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘What did Harper-Bennet do?’

‘Found his room.’

‘Which is?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Sally nodded, nostrils flaring to cope with the smoke, ‘he made damn sure I knew that. 58 – on the first floor.’

‘What were his movements after that?’

‘It got a bit difficult then, Max,’ Sally said. ‘For a start, we were supposed to be initiating change in our respective establishments and had to persuade recalcitrant old bastards like you of the need for GNVQ, and secondly, Harper-Bennet was doing his best to look at my tits.’

‘Is there a Mrs Harper-Bennet?’ Maxwell asked, out of curiosity.

‘There is not. Who’d have him?’

‘Who indeed?’ Maxwell was elsewhere.

‘Mr Maxwell,’ Sally said slowly, ‘a look of inscrutability has appeared on your otherwise benign features. What’s going on in that febrile brain?’

‘Ah,’ Maxwell smiled, ‘if only we could answer that. Try this for size. Alan Harper-Bennet is a weirdo. Into ladies’ undies in a mammoth way. Perhaps he has a collection at home in Luton – well, I don’t suppose there’s much else to do there, really. He makes a habit of adding to the collection whenever he can. He probably got yours today. Did he try to get Liz Striker’s last Thursday? Did she object? Put up a struggle? Did he panic and kill her?’

‘It’s a bit thin, Max,’ Sally said. ‘Surely, if that’s the case, she’d have died in her room, wouldn’t she?’

‘Not necessarily.’ Maxwell said. ‘You see, I can’t help thinking that Liz died because she knew something.’

‘What?’

I said –’

‘No.’ Sally shook her head in irritation. ‘I mean, what did she know?’

‘Ah,’ Maxwell’s finger was in the air, ‘the sixty-four thousand dollar question. If we knew that, we’d have chummy in the frame.’

‘How did you make out – no, let me rephrase that – what did you learn from Rachel?’

‘Oh, Christ!’ Maxwell looked at his watch and gulped down his wine. ‘Not a lot, really. Listen, we’ll do a swap tomorrow. I’ll tackle Phyllida Bowles. You have a go at Michael Wynn.’

‘Max,’ Sally stood up with him, ‘I want to go home tomorrow. Remember?’

He looked at the frightened face under the pink towel, slightly flushed with the wine. He patted her cheek. ‘Sally,’ he said, ‘the day before yesterday you were all set for me to solve this thing. I can’t do that if I’m not here.’

‘That was then,’ she said, ‘before …’

‘Before Alan Harper-Bennet swiped your knickers.’

‘Quite.’

He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Well, we’ll see,’ he said. ‘I can catch a train, you know, if you want to go. Let’s see what the morning brings, shall we?’

And he left her to lock the door firmly behind him.

It was late. Hustling past the rubber plant at the top of the stairs, he crashed as quietly as he could through the fire-doors and down to the next floor. He caught himself a nasty one on the fire extinguisher on the corner, and then, he was there. Outside Room 215. He knocked once. Twice. God alone knew what emotions ran through Peter Maxwell’s mind as he waited there. He felt like a fumbling student again, in those pre-permissive days of the early ’60s, when it was all Elvis and John Leyton and strawberries at Grantchester and the plop of punt poles on the Cam. Her face hadn’t changed. Her laugh. The easy way she had with her. But she was older. Christ, he was older. There’d been no grey hair then, no side-whiskers. He’d still been trim from seven years of rugger and cricket. He’d only recently discovered Southern Comfort. What was he doing here? It could be a disaster. But he knocked again, his heart thumping.

No answer. Maxwell checked his watch in the stillness of the corridor. It was nearly half-past twelve, for God’s sake. Earlier, they’d made their tryst for midnight. But Maxwell had let this wretched Liz Striker business intervene. He’d put it first. But it wasn’t the case, was it? Not really. It was his own inflated ego, that was all. Well, he was paying for it now. Rachel was obviously asleep.

Maxwell quietly drove his forehead silently against the door frame. What an idiot! Still, he’d see her at breakfast and apologize. There was always tomorrow.

Tomorrow was Tuesday. Maxwell thought, as he shaved in the innermost recesses of Room 101, that he’d normally be having 10CS this morning. Some poor bastard of a supply teacher would be taking them instead. Donna would be putting her lipstick on, Stacey would be doing her hair – or Carla’s as the mood took her. Ronnie would be tackling his sandwiches about now. And in front of this hidden curriculum, they were supposed to be discussing the Bay of Pigs. Well, well. Perhaps GNVQ at Carnforth had its attractions after all. One of them was lying in. Maxwell had been doggo after his shower and it was only the sound of cars on the gravel under his window that woke him up.

He chose the spotted tie this morning – the one he told everybody had been given to him by Sir Robin Day in exchange for a few interviewing tips – and padded down in his brothel-creepers to face the world. But there was no one in the Hadleigh Suite. A few scattered pieces of toast and half-finished coffees gave it an aura of the Marie Celeste. Even the red-faced woman who doled out the scrambled eggs had vanished. Maxwell nearly looked out of the window to see if the lifeboats had gone.

‘Mr Maxwell?’ A female voice made him turn. It was WPC O’Halloran, grim-faced, tired-looking.

‘Good morning, my dear,’ Maxwell said.

‘Everybody’s in the Whittingham Suite. Shall we?’

‘By all means,’ Maxwell said and a difficult few seconds of protocol followed, during which she eventually let him go first.

Everybody was indeed in the Whittingham Suite. They all seemed to be gabbling at once, like the elect crowd invited to the BAFTA award ceremonies they persisted in showing every year on the telly – loads of luvvies congratulating each other while secretly hating everybody’s guts. The only one Maxwell couldn’t see was Rachel. Perhaps she’d slept in. A rather ashen-faced Inspector McBride stood on the dais at the front, flanked by assorted heavies in and out of uniform. For all it was a Tuesday morning, clearly in shift hours, McBride wore neither tie nor jacket. Something, as Sherlock Holmes might have said, was clearly afoot.

Maxwell sat at the back. He had no hope of reaching Sally Greenhow, flanked as she was by Alan Harper-Bennet on one side and Valerie Marks on the other. Margot Jenkinson moved her bag for him.

‘Have I missed the main feature?’ Maxwell whispered to her.

‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ she said. ‘We were all summoned from breakfast. I’d kill for a bit of toast. Camel?’ She poked a cigarette packet under Maxwell’s nose.

‘No thanks.’ He waved them aside, unsure whether to smoke them or ride them.

‘Ladies and gentlemen …’ McBride cleared his throat. ‘I apologize for calling you together like this.’

Maxwell noticed that there were Carnforth staff members in the audience too. Tracey was there, the counter and reception manned in her absence by God-knew-who; Antonio, the chef for the week, in a less than reputable off-white shirt; and the ever-up Gary Leonard, groomed, as always, to within an inch of his life. The red-faced woman peered over his shoulder.

‘I am sorry to have to be the one to tell you that there has been another incident here at the centre. The body of Mrs Rachel King was found a little over half an hour ago.’

Peter Maxwell sat under one of the cedars that had stood by the road for years. Far, far longer ago than the building of the Carnforth Centre, there had been a house on this site. Three cedars had been planted then. The storm of ’87 had claimed one and the branches of the second had been lopped by the council, because they drooped too low over the road.

He saw her coming, a green and stonewashed speck in the strong sunlight that still gilded the centre. He sat in the evening shadows, a little chill in his shirt-sleeves, because the heat of the day was not yet that great, his arms outstretched, resting on his knees, like a model for a Maxfield Parrish.

‘I’ve looked everywhere for you,’ Sally said, looking down at him. She sat on the grass by his elbow. ‘Max, I’m so sorry.’

‘Thanks,’ he said.

‘I don’t know what she meant to you; not really. But all the same …’

‘That’s the irony of it,’ he said, staring ahead at the uniformed policemen standing in knots in the front drive, and the big, white cars, ‘neither do I. Oh, once … Once she was everything. I couldn’t open a book or turn a corner without seeing her there – her face, her hair. That musical laugh she had.’

‘Max,’ Sally played with the grass, afraid to look her old colleague in the face, ‘it’s none of my business, I know, but …’

‘I left her,’ he smiled. He looked at the frizzy-haired girl who in turn found the courage to look at him. ‘Was that what you were wondering?’

Sally shook her head. ‘I’ve no right to ask,’ she said.

‘No, no.’ He patted her hand, and gave her his Bob Hoskins. ‘No, it’s good to talk. It helps. I’ve been on my own all day, walking the shingle, the dunes. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the gulls cry so lonely before. Not even when Jenny …’